Albert Boni:

An Inventory of His Readex Microprint Corporation Collection at the Harry
Ransom Center

Creator:

Boni, Albert, 1892-1981

Title:

Albert Boni Readex Microprint
Corporation Collection

Dates:

1932-1970 (bulk 1959-1969)

Extent:

4 document boxes, 1 bound volume (1.89 linear feet)

Abstract:

The Albert Boni Readex Microprint
Corporation Collection consists of correspondence, research reports, research
notes,
clippings, and manuscripts that document the Readex Microprint Corporation's
development of Microprint technologies as well as Albert Boni's composition of
bibliographies on photographic literature. The collection is arranged in three
series: I. Readex Microprint Corporation Research, 1932-1970, undated; II. Index
to
the Literature of Photography, 1932-1950, undated; and III. Photographic Literature, undated.

Call Number:

Manuscript Collection MS-0445

Language:

English

Access:

Open for research. Part or all of this collection is housed off-site and may require
up to three business days notice for access in the Ransom Center’s Reading and
Viewing Room. Please contact the Center before requesting this material:
reference@hrc.utexas.edu

Albert Boni was born on October 21, 1892, in New York City to Charles and Bertha
(née Saslavsky) Boni. Raised in Newark,
New Jersey, Boni attended first Cornell University and then Harvard University.
In
1917, he married Nell van Leeuwen and had one son, William.

In 1913, Boni began a career in the book trade when he and his younger brother
Charles founded the Washington Square Book Shop, located at 137 MacDougal Street
in
New York City, which soon became popular with writers from the Greenwich Village
bohemian community. In 1915, the Boni brothers partnered with Harry Scherman to
launch the Little Leather Library, which offered reprints of classics; however,
other commitments soon required the Bonis to sell their share. In 1917, Albert
Boni
co-founded the publishing firm of Boni and Liveright, where he helped launch the
Modern Library. Though Boni's name remained a part of the publishing house until
1928, he left the firm in 1918 after reputedly losing a coin toss for control
of the
business to his partner Horace Liveright. In 1923, Boni entered into another
publishing venture with his brother Charles, purchasing the small house of Lieber
and Lewis to found Albert and Charles Boni. The firm went on to publish titles
by
William Carlos Williams, Ford Madox Ford, Thornton Wilder, Marcel Proust, and
socialist writers such as Upton Sinclair and Max Eastman. In the late 1930s, the
firm moved away from publishing original works of literature in favor of reprints
and nonfiction before going out of business in 1939.

Also in 1939, Albert Boni founded the Readex Microprint Corporation. Boni conceived
of his idea for microprint in 1934 when his friend, writer and editor Manuel
Komroff, showed him his experiments with enlarging photographic images. Boni was
struck by the notion that if one were to reduce rather than enlarge images,
publishers and libraries might be able to access large amounts of information,
but
at a great savings in materials, cost, and space. Throughout the 1940s, Boni worked
to develop microprint, a micro-opaque process in which pages were photographed
using
35mm microfilm and printed on cards using offset lithography. The end product
was a
6” x 9” card containing ten rows of ten pages each. These cards, each of which
carried 100 pages of text, could then be viewed with a microprint reader. During
this period Boni also published his first bibliography of photographic literature,
A Guide to the Literature of Photography and Related
Subjects (1943), as a quarterly supplement (no. 18) to the Photo-Lab Index.

Significant early Readex Microprint series included the British Sessional Papers, the United States Government Non-Depository
Publications, Early American Imprints, 1639-1800, and The Collected Scientific & Technical Papers on Nuclear
Science. In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Readex continued to
develop its microprint techniques, licensing several advances developed by
scientists at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Boni also continued his bibliographic work on photography, editing Photographic Literature (1962) and its supplement,
Photographic Literature, 1960-1970 (1972). Boni
viewed his work with Readex Microprint and his bibliographic scholarship on
photography as intimately connected, attributing his success in developing
Microprint to his research on the literature of photography.

In 1974, William F. Boni succeeded his father as President of Readex Microprint
Corporation. William sold Readex to Dan Jones of NewsBank in 1984, and in the
late
1980s, Readex transitioned to producing works on microfiche. Today, Readex provides
online digital resources as a division of NewsBank.

The Albert Boni Readex Microprint Corporation Collection consists of correspondence,
research reports, research notes, clippings, and manuscripts that document the
Readex Microprint Corporation's development of Microprint technologies as well
as
Albert Boni's composition of bibliographies on photographic literature. The
collection is arranged in three series: I. Readex Microprint Corporation Research,
1932-1970, undated; II. Index to the Literature of Photography, 1932-1950, undated;
and III. Photographic Literature, undated.

Series I. Readex Microprint Corporation Research contains records and research
materials that reflect the functioning of Readex Microprint Corporation from its
founding, circa 1939, until 1970, with an emphasis on its development of Microprint
technologies during the late 1950s and 1960s.

A large portion of materials within this series reflects Readex's negotiations and
collaborations with scientists at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven,
Netherlands. With the assistance of Jan Boeke, a research consultant hired by
Readex, Albert Boni and his associate P. A. van der Meulen entered into an agreement
permitting Readex to license photographic film processes developed at Philips.
The
relationship with Philips is documented in correspondence, research reports,
clippings, patent documents, and notes. Of note are reports and research notes
concerning the P. D. [Physical Development] process. Invented by Philips scientists
Hendrik Jonker and C. J. (Cornelis Johannes) Dippel, the P. D. process is an
intermediate photosensitive process that falls between the "expensive silver halide emulsion process and the
inexpensive diazotype sensitizing process."

Also included in Series I. are Photographic Film Patent and A. B. Film materials
consisting of lab reports, samples, patent applications, and correspondence relating
to Readex's own efforts to develop and patent its improvements to the photographic
film process. Other materials in the series include advertising pamphlets by Readex
and other film and book publishers, as well as bibliographies of and research
notes
on potential subject matter for Readex Microprint publications.

Series II. Index to the Literature of Photography contains correspondence, research
notes, lists, and manuscript fragments for a work that Boni labeled 'Index to
the
Literature of Photography.' Boni's lists include subject headings from A to Z,
but
typescript drafts (some with handwritten corrections) are present only for entries
under the letter A. Also present are unidentified carbon copy chapter bibliographies
originally filed with one of the Index typescripts. Although Boni did not publish
a
work titled 'Index to the Literature of Photography,' much of this material
corresponds with entries that appear in his various published works on photographic
literature.

Series III consists of a published copy of the Albert Boni's Photographic Literature; An International Bibliographic Guide to General and
Specialized Literature on Photographic Processes, Techniques, Theory, Chemistry,
Physics, Apparatus, Materials & Applications, Industry, History,
Biography, Aesthetics (1962) containing handwritten corrections and
additions. These corrections do not appear in Boni's Photographic Literature, 1960-1970 (1972), which was a supplemental
volume covering the decade of the 1960s.

The collection is in good condition with the exception of composite work sheets that
hold film and microprint samples. These are fragile and require special handling.
The majority of the collection is in English, although some Dutch correspondence
and
documents are present.

The Ransom Center's Book Collection contains numerous books published by Albert
Boni's various publishing ventures. Boni correspondence is also present in the
Center's Edward Nehls Collection. Several other institutions hold research materials
for Albert Boni. The New York Public Library's Billy Rose Theatre Division holds
an
Albert Boni Collection and the University of California, Los Angeles's Charles
E.
Young Library holds two relevant collections: the Albert and Charles Boni, Inc.
Records, circa 1916-1974 and the Albert Boni Collection of Material about
Photography, circa 1840-1983.